40 Ideas People Believe To Be Normal But Are Actually Propaganda Created By Corporations, According To Folks In This Online Group

That it is ok to produce a ton of single-use packaging as long as you don’t “litter” it.

Most products made for the care of babies. Babies need very little in the way of furniture, gear, special foods etc. But people are so willing to buy so much stuff.

"Breakfast is the most important meal of the day" was a marketing campaign used by Kellogs to help sell their cereal.

Companies like Intuit have lobbied to make sure filing taxes can't be free and easy.

Monoculture grass lawns.

Women shaving. In the US, Women shaving any part their bodies wasn’t even a thing before WWII, but all the men got drafted to war and razor companies took a big hit, so they successfully convinced all of us that natural hair growing anywhere out of a woman’s body besides her hair and eyebrows is disgusting.

I’m talking specifically about western culture/the United States. Evidence of ancient Greeks and Egyptians/etc shaving has no relevance in this instance.

Terms of service agreements example when you buy a phone do you read all 30 pages of your service agreement letting you know that they have basically proprietary control over everything you say and do.

The way we celebrate holidays is much more of a production than it used to be - Christmas, Halloween, Valentine’s Day. Just more excuses to consume c**p en masse.

That you need to drink milk in order to get calcium. Calcium is a mineral and can be found in leafy greens and broccoli to name a couple. The whole, “got milk?” campaigns and all that were funded by the dairy industry. Pretty successful propaganda!

Buying a diamond ring when you propose

Mothers Day. The original intent was to have a holiday to appreciate mothers, corporations ended up making it a big money grab, and then the person who petitioned for mothers day spent the rest of their life trying to get the holiday removed.

An entire nurdle of toothpaste on your brush.

You don't need that much. A pea-sized amount is enough.

COMMERCIALS. they’re everywhere, YouTube, TV, Hulu, Spotify, etc. the only way to get rid of commercials is to, surprise surprise, pay more which is ANOTHER commercial. Just now realizing that commerce is the basis of commercial lol

Credit Ratings

Not discussing your income with coworkers. At least in the US, employees are protected, so they are allowed to discuss income amongst each other without fear of getting fired for it. However, a lot of companies have kept the idea that it is taboo or that your job may be at risk for doing so and a lot of people still buy it to this day.

Yes, most people that live in the US know that all states (except Montana) are "at-will" states, meaning that they can fire you for no reason at all, meaning that while technically they won't fire you for discussing pay, some companies will not like it and find any excuse to let you go, so keep that in mind.

Also, some companies will try to stop if right off the bat by having it in your employee handbook that you are not to discuss pay, so make sure you check that out in your case. My company actually has the opposite, stating that they will never go after someone for discussing pay, and they even have it posted in public areas. However, I'm not naive and understand that while it may seem that way, they can just be doing that to protect themselves, so who knows. I've been there for a few years now and we have not heard of anyone getting fired for anything that could be even remotely related to pay discussions.

The point of my comment was to let people know that the idea of discussing your pay with other employees being a "no-no" or taboo is an antiquated idea started by greedy companies decades ago to help keep the average worker from demanding better wages that they rightfully should be getting in the first place, and that legally they can't outright fire you simply for doing that (with exceptions, of course). I myself have no issues letting anyone know how much I make if they ask, and if they use that to get themselves properly compensated, then I'm happy for them at the end of the day.

Apple

Whoever is behind the apple marketing campaign is a genius and flooding the consumers with propaganda. There's no real correlation between how many apples you eat each a day and how often you visit the doctor or get sick

People eating KFC during Christmas time in Japan because of KFC's marketing campaign that promoted their products as a traditional Western Christmas treat.

Merch drops, secret popup locations, limited runs, etc.

These are just marketing tactics to create Artificial Scarcity and hype/demand that wouldn't be there otherwise.

Carrots helping you see in the dark was WW2 propaganda to confuse the Germans.

“You should pay off debt by getting more debt!”